SPEECH 



OF 



•^ 



X 



HON. HENRY WILSON, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS, 

OX THE FHESIDENT'S MESSAGE ON THE LECOMPT^^ 

CONSTITUTION. /^yoFco/; 

^ U.S. A. 



Delivered in the Senate, February 3d and 4th, 1858. ^^v^^,^' 



The pending question being the motion to re- 
fer the Presideni'a mesRa^e and the Lecomp- 
ton Constitution to the Committee on Territo- 
riea, Mr. Wilson moved to amend the motion bj 
adding : 

" And that the committee be instructed to ascertain thf 
number of votes g:iveu at each county in the 'I'erritorj- 
upon the question of calling a Convention to form a Con- 
stitution; to inquire into the appointment of delegates to 
ihe Conveniion, and the census and registration under 
which tne ,-.anie was made, and whether the same was in 
compliance with law ; the number of votes cast for each 
catididate for delegate to tiie Convention, and the places 
where cast, and whether said Cons itution received the 
votes of a majority of the delegates to said Convention; 
the number of votes cast in said Territory on the 21 «t oi 
December last, for and against said Coustiiution, and for 
and against any parts thereof, and ti;e number so cast at 
each place of voting; the number of votes cast on tne 
4th day of January last for and against said Constitu- 
tion, and the number so cast at each placp of voting; the 
number ot votes cast on tlie 4th day of January last fo; 
any :State nnd legislative officers thereof, and tlie number 
of votes cast fjr each candidaje for such offices, and the 
places where ca>t; and ihat said committee also ascertain, 
as nearly as possible, what portion, if any, of the votes so 
cast at any of the times and places aforesaid were fraud- 
ulent or illegal ; and that said committee have power to 
send for persons and pi'pers."' 

Mr. WILSOiSr. This application, Mr. Presi- 
dent, for the admisaion of Kansas into this 
sisterhood of free Commonwealths, comes to ue 
under circainatances that demand the prompt, 
thorough, and fail investigation of the Senate 
and of the House of Representatives. Charges 
have been made by the people of Kansas, bj 
Government officials in Kansas, of illegalities 
and frauds — illegalities and frauds which have 
deprived the people of that Territory of their 
rights, and defeated their will. These reports 
have gone over the country, over the Christian 
and civilized world, bringing dishonor and 
shame upon free democratic institutions. 
Under these circumstances, sir, I take it that 
every Senator, every member of Congress, eve- 
ry fair-minded and honorable man throughout 
the Republic, desires, before we vote to bring 
Kansas into the Union or to reject her applica- 
tion, that all the facts connected with the calling 
of the Convention to frame a Constitution, the 
election of delegates, the framing of the Consti- 
tution, the mode of submission to the people, the 
election under the Constitution, and all the 



questions concerning the rights and the intereais 
of the people of the Territory, shall be fuliy ia- 
vesligated. To accomplish this object, which 
every honorable gentleman in America must 
desire, I have submitted the motion that the 
Committee on Territories be instructed to make 
this investigation, and that they have power to 
send for persons and papers. 

I indulge the hope, Mr. President, that evrry 
Senator on this floor will promptly vote tor 
these iaatructicns, and that the Committee en 
Territories will make the most, searching, 
thorough, aud complete investigation into this 
whole subject ; and if there be frauds, if there 
be wrongs, if there be anything in the action 
of that Territory which baffles the popular will, 
which robs the people of their rights, that the 
facta will be presented to the Senate and to the 
country, and that we shall be guided by the 
simple idea of ascertaining the real will of the 
people of the Territory of Kansas, and letting 
that will control our action. 

Before I sit down, sir, I wish to call the at- 
tention of the Senate to some of the allusions, 
assumptions, and declarations, of the President, 
in this extraordinary communication to Con- 
gress. The President told us, in his annual 
message, that the attention of the country bad 
been too much drawn to the Territory of Kan- 
sas. I regret, I thick the country will regret, 
I think every man who cares anything for right 
or justice, who cares anything for the honor 
of the American name and the American char- 
acter— a; e, anything for the reputation of the 
Chief Magistrate of the Republic — will regret 
that the President himself had not devoted time 
enough to the consideration of the affairs of 
Kansas, to have enabled him to present to the 
Senate and the country a full, intelligent, ac- 
curate, and truthful statement of the events 
which have transpired in that Territory. I say 
here, sir, what I know to be true, what every 
intelligent man in the Senate knows to be true, 
what the country and the world know to be 
true, that the statements in this message mis- 
represent, wholly and entirely, the events which 
have transpired in that Territory; and that 



rCo^, 



2 



wberever this message goes, it will carry to the 
■world a stupendous and gigantic misrepresenta- 
tion of afiairs in the Territory of Kansas. 

I know, sir, that the President cannot be ex- 
pected, in the midst of the vast duties that 
devolve upon hina, to understand everything 
that has transpired in that Territory. He was 
out of thci country when the act for the organiza- 
tion of Kansas was passed ; he was out of the 
country during the eventful years of 1854 and 
1855, and a portion of 1856 — years in which 
events of great magnitude transpired in Kan- 
sas. He was nominated, we all know, sir, be- 
cause he wasout of the country, and had no con- 
'nection with these events, because he was able 
to prove an alibi. But, sir, he sends to us, to 
men familiar with the events of the past four 
years, this message, covering this application 
for the admission of Kar.sas, and he gives a 
coloring to events in that Territory which will 
give to the country and to the world about as 
correct an idea of the sfF^irs of that Territsry 
as the bulletins of Napoleon gave to the people 
of France of the condition of the grand army 
on its retreat from Moscow. 

The President tells us that there is a delusion 
in ihe country in regard to the condition of 
affairs in Kansas ; that it is supposed there are 
two par ies in that Territory, contending for the 
goverrment of the Territory. He gives us to 
undprstand that this is not the fact ; that there 
is cot a great Free State party, struggling to 
make Kansas a Free State, and a Slave State 
party siruggling to make Kansas a slave State. 
He would have the country understand that 
th'S \i the state of affairs in that Territory ; 
that there is a party of law and order, a party 
that legitimately 'and legally governs the Ter- 
ritory ; and that there is another party setting 
at defiance the laws of Congress and the Con- 
stitution of the country, and that they are la- 
boring to overthrow by lawless violence the 
Government of the Territory, and to impose on 
the people a Constitution of their own choice. 
Now, sir, I know, you know, every man here 
knows, that this is not the fact. I say there is 
no party and there has been no party in the 
Territory of Kansas, setting at defiance the 
Constitution of the United States or the laws 
of the United States ; no party, nobody, no set 
men, in that Territory, in rebellion against Fed- 
eral authority. 

On the 30th March, 1855, the people of the Ter- 
ritory were summoned to the ballot-box to elect 
thireen members of the Legislative Council and 
twectyeix members of ihe House otRsprcsenta- 
tives. On that day there was an invasion of the 
Tenitory of forly-uine hundred men from the 
neighboring State of Missouri. These forty-nine 
hundred aimed men went into every Council dis- 
trict and into every Representative district but 
one. They took possession of the electoral urns ; 
they selected the Legislature to frame the laws 
for the Territory, and to shape and mould its 
future. Of the twenty-nine hundred men in 



the Territory who had a right to vote, less than 
fourteen hundred voted on that day, and yet a 
majority of actual residents were in favor of 
a free State, and had majorities in sixteen ot 
the eighteen districts. The?e facts have been 
proved, demonstrated, by taking the names of 
the per.^ons enrolled as actual voters, and ta- 
king the names of the persons who voted on the 
30th cf March. These facts were proved 
under the order of the House of Representa- 
tives, and by a thorough investigation by a 
committee cf that House, and no man here or 
elsewhere can deny them. 

The people of Kansas had imposed upon 
them that day a Government not elected by 
themselves — a Government imposed upon them 
by those forty-nine hundred men fiom the State 
of Missouri. The people of the Territory felt 
this to be a great outi-age on their rights — they 
had a light to feel so. The people of any State 
would have felt outraged on goiug to the ballot- 
boxes and finding them in the possession of 
armed -men from another State. Gov. Reeder 
undertook to correct some of these frauds upon 
the ballot-box, by withholding certificates from 
the members thus elected; and Gov. Reeder, 
on that day when he undertook to right these 
wrongs, was marked for swift destruction. 

The Legislature assembled ; it threw out the 
Free State metnbers 'Tho held certificates from 
Governor Reeder ; it passed laws violating the 
rights of a free people ; it violated the freedom 
of speech and of the press ; it denied to the 
people iho right to go to the balloi.-box, unless 
they took a test oath that no freeman could 
take without degradation. Those laws would 
not allow a man to sit in a jury-box, if he denied 
the right to hold slaves in tne Territory. These 
laws were intended (to use the language of 
one of the leading men who imposed them on 
the people) to degrade and drive out of the Ter- 
riiory the Fi'ee State men. What were free- 
men to do under such circumstances? They had 
been brought up in the belief that the people 
were the inherent source of power — that all 
fower came from the people, in their sovereign 
capacity. They had read the Kaasas-Nebraska 
act, and they supposed that act conferred on 
the people, without the intervention of a Terri- 
torial Legiblature or of Congress, the right to 
come together to frame a Constitution, and to 
ask for admission into the Union as a sover- 
eign State. The people of oiher Territories 
had framed such Constitutions. They assem- 
bled in Convention, they framed such a^-Consti- 
tution, they submitted that Constitution to the 
people, and it received the popular verdict. 
They elected their officers under it ; they chose 
their Senator?, and sent them to this Chamber 
toaek for admission into the Union. They under- 
took to enforce no laws, and from that time to 
ihe present they have kept that Topeka Gov- 
ernment in existence; they have framed some 
acts necessary for its preservation, but from 
that day to this they have never attempted to 



enforce these laws. I declare here to-day what 
I know personally to be absolutely true, and I 
declare it in the face of ihe declaration of Gov. 
Walker and of the President, that the presence 
of your army in that Territory, the proclama- 
tions of your officials, the action here in the Sen- 
ate and the House of Representatives, have not 
prevented that people from putting those laws 
in execution ; but they have acted according 
to their own well-chosen and deliberate policy. 
They never intended to go into rebellion ; they 
never intended to enforce these laws against 
the laws of Congress. They have always denied 
the validity of your Territorial laws, which were 
imposed upon them by fraud and force ; they 
have not used them for the protection of their 
liberties or their lives. Young men who went 
to that Territory to practice their professions 
have, from conscientious scruples, engaged in 
the most common labors of life, rather than 
acknowledge those laws, or take the oath to sup- 
port them. The masses of the people of that 
Territory, from that time to this, have never 
acknowledged those laws as binding on them ; 
they have never claimed their protection. 
They have been outraged, robbed, imprisoned ; 
they have seen their dwellings burned down ; 
they have been invaded ; many of their fellow- 
citizens have been murdered, because they loved 
liberty ; but they have not invoked the pro- 
tection of those laws. They never have, they 
never will, they never ought to do so. No man 
here would ever submit to them, or claim their 
protection, or use them for his own personal 
protection. 

The President, in support of this charge of 
rebellion, quotes the evidence of Governor 
Walker. Governor Walker, sir, went to that 
Territory as the President's instrument, to ac- 
complish a certain purpose. He was appointed 
Governor of Kansas on the 30th of March, 
1857 ; he entered the Territory on Sabbath 
evening, the 24th of May. Much of the inter- 
vening sixty days of time was spent by the 
Governor in making speeches, and writing let- 
ters magnifying his great mission. I went to 
the Territory, from St. Louis, in company with 
Governor Walker 5 I saw him at Lawrence ; I 
saw him when he was welcomed by the people 
of " rebellious " Lawrence in a generous way, 
of which any man might be proud ; I was at 
Lecompton, the capital, when he arrived there. 
Governor Walker went to Kansas, and his own 
letters demonstrate it, on this mission to divide 
the people who were in favor of a free State, 
to unite the Free State Democrats with the Pro- 
Slavery men, and secure the slavery then exist- 
ing in Kansas, and make it a Black-Law, Pro- 
Slavery, Democratic State. That was his mis- 
sion ; and no man in America could have 
labored more faithfully to accomplish that ob- 
ject. He went to that Territory a Pro-Slavery 
man, in favor of the Pro- Slavery policy of this 
country ; and in his inaugural address to the 
people, in view of the fact that it might become 



a free State, he said that the great Indian ter- 
ritory of the South would be slave territory, 
and that slave States might be made out of it. 
I was there when that address was issued ; and 
•although we are told now that everything in . 
the Territory was in a state of excitement bor- 
dering on rebellion, I say here today, that there 
was no spot on the North American continent 
where there was more quiet than existed, on the 
1st of June last, in the Territory of Kansas. 
Rebellion existed only in the teeming brain of 
Governor Walker. 

Sir, when Governor Walker arrived in Kan- 
sas, the persons appointed to take the census 
and to enroll the voters had not performed 
their duty in about half of the counties of the 
Territory. The Free State men, under the lead 
of Governor Robinson and other leading men, 
made a proposition to acting Governor Stanton, 
before Governor Walker arrived, to go into the 
election of delegates to the Convention, if they 
could be enrolled, and the ballot-boxes so pro- 
tected that there should be no invasions and no 
fraudulent voting. They did not wish to com- 
mit themselves in that election, and find at the 
polls what they found at the polls on the 30th 
of March, 1855 — an invading host of illegal 
voters, to rob them of their rights. Secretary 
Stanton, who was then acting Governor, to> 
whom this proposition was made, answered 
these gentlemen by saying he had no power to. 
correct the list of voters, and he could do noth- 
ing to aid them. Some of the people, in some- 
of the counties where the officials had refused' 
to take the census or to register the voters,, 
made an application to go on and elect their- 
delegates ; and it was suggested to them that 
they could do so, and that their delegates might 
be accepted by the Convention. When the 
day of election came, less than twenty4hree 
hundred men went to the polls to vote, about 
one-ninth part of all the voters in the Terri- 
tory. 

When the result of this election was known' 
in the Territory, it was believed by intelligent 
men of all parties that the Convention would 
never assemble; that it had gone down beneath 
the moral sentiment of the people ; that it was 
an ignominious and contemptible failure. 

The President quotes Governor Walker's 
hasty and ill-timed language in regard to the 
action of the people of the city of Law?ence, to 
show their rebellious spirit. We were told 
here, the other day, by the Senator from Geor- 
gia, that the city of '* Lawrence was the sink 
of filth, folly, and falsehood." Sir, I venture 
to say, that there is not a town in the United 
States, north, south, east, or west, of the num- 
bers to be found in this town of Lawrence, 
containing more of individual worth, or per- 
sonal character, or general intelligence. I 
venture to say that there are more college grad- 
uates in that town than in any town west of 
the Alleghanies of equal population. The peo- 
ple of Lawrence are a law-abiding, l^iberty-lov- 



ing people. Having lived for two yeara with- 
out the protection of law, having been robbed 
and plundered, and being desirous of doing 
something for their own local interests, the 
people of that town, in July last, framed acd 
adopted a city charter. The people there are 
all on one side ; there are, I think, only two or 
three Slave State men there, and no one intend- 
ed to enforce any laws on them. It was a 
charter framed by cooimon consent. The laws 
under it were intended to be executed by com- 
mon consent. The committee of the people 
say, in their address : 

" As its at-tion will be purely local, and have reference 
merely to our own internal affairs, no collision is appre- 
hended with any other organization claiming to exercise 
general jurisdiction in the Territory." 

They did not intend to violate the laws of 
the Union or of the Territory, The Governor 
moved the troops upon that town, and pro- 
nounced their acts rebellion; but the people 
went right on. They framed their ordinances, 
they put their ordinances in execution, while 
his army was encamped on their soil; and from 
that time to this, they have peacefully and qui- 
etly administered their own local town affairs, 
and have harmed nobody in or out of the Ter- 
ritory. This simple act, performed by com- 
mon consent, having the assent of the whole 
people, intended to operate only in their own 
local effairs, was pronounced by Gov. Walker 
»s the greatest rebellion the world had ever 
witnessed : 

"Are'iellion to iniquitous, and necessarily involving 
euch awful consequences, has never before disgraced any 
age or couiary." 

This ridiculous declaration is only equalled 
by his ridiculous action in moving the army on 
Lawrence. The Governor tells us that this 
town of Lawrence was the hot-bed of the Aboli- 
lionista of the Bast, that paid agents of those 
societies were there. I deny the fact that paid 
agents were in the town of Lawrence, of any 
Abolition society. East or West. 

The Legislature imposed on Kansas by law- 
less violence provided that the people should 
vote in October, 1856, whether they would call 
a Convention to frame a Constitution. In Octo- 
ber, 1856, the vote was taken, and about two 
thousand votes were given upon that question. 
Test oaths were then demanded, and the Free 
State men would not vote. Sir, the President 
sharply censures the peoplo of Kansas for not 
voting for the election of delegates to the Con- 
vention. The Legislature, in the winter of 1857, 
passed the Convention act. The plan was to 
make Kansas a slave State. The time, the mods, 
and the machinery, were r.il selected, with the 
skill of political tricksters, to secure that result. 
Governor Geary vetoed the act, because it con- 
tained no clause authorizing and directing the 
submission of the Constitution to the people, for 
their ratification or rejection. In a recently- 
written letter,' Governor Geary tells us that — 

" In a conference with the committees of the two Houses 
by whom the bill had been reported, I proposed to sign 
the bill, provided they v^ould insert in it a section author- 



izing the submission of the Constitution as above indica- 
ted. But they distinctly informed me that the bill mctthe 
approbaiion of their friends in the South — that it was not 
their intention tlie Constitution should ever be submit- 
ted lo the people, and that to all intents and purposes it 
was like the laws of the Medes and Persians, and could 
not be altered." 

Governor Geary tells us that he was informed 
that the reason why the Constitution was not to 
be submitted to the people was, that their 
friends in the South, who were in favor of ma- 
king Kansas a slave State, required that it should 
not be submitted. Their friends in the South 
were wise in this respect. They believed they 
could control the election of the delegates to 
the Convention; but they knew that if the Con- 
stitution was submitted to a fair vote of the peo- 
ple, the people, by an overwhelming majority, 
would vote it down ; and they then demanded, 
if we are to believe these gentlemen of the com- 
mittees of the two Houses, that the Constitution 
should not be submitted to the people. Why 
did gentlemen from the South demand that the 
Constitution should not be acted upon by the 
people ? They knew that the people were in 
favor of making Kansas a free State ; that they 
would vote down any Constitution that did not 
make Kansas a free State ; and therefore the 
people must be robbed of their right to vote on 
their own Constitution. 

The President sent Governor Walker to the 
Territory with the promise, with the assu- 
rance, that the people should vote upon the 
Conslitulion. Governor Walker, in his letter of 
acceptance, says that he understands the Presi- 
dent and the Cabinet to be committed to that 
policy. Governor Walker went to the Territory, 
and in his inaugural address promised the peo- 
ple that "unless ihe Convention submit ^Ae Con- 
stitution to the vote of all the actual resident 
settlers of Kansas, and the election be fairly 
and justly conducted, the Constitution will be, 
and will ought to rejected hy Congress." 

What was the effect of these declarations on 
the people ? The people said, " the census has 
not been taken ; the registry has not been hon- 
estly made ; we shall ba cheated, if we go the 
polls to elect delegates to this Convention. We 
do not wish to commit ourselves, and then be 
cheated and d-frauded. We will let them elect 
their delegates to the Convention, frame their 
Constitution; and when they submit it to us, we 
will vote it down." That was the sentiment of 
the Free State men throughout the whole Ter- 
ritory, and all the evidence goes lo show it. I 
know it to be so by my OT>n personal experience 
in that Territory. I know it to be the senti- 
ment of the leading men and of the people. 

We are told by the President, that the reason 
why they did not vote was that they wanted to 
enforce their Topeka Constitution ; that they 
wanted to frame laws and establish their rebel- 
lious Government I Sir, they had a Convention 
on ihe 9th of June, before the delegates were 
elected to ihe Lecompton Convention, and they 
voted, with only one solitary exception, against 
putting the laws framed under the Topeka 



Constitution in force. The people intended 
nothing of thia kind ; but they decided to elect 
their officers under the Topeka Constitution, to 
keep that Government alive for protection in 
the last resort, and then resolved t5 go into the 
Oatober election under protest. They went 
into the October election, and carried the 
Legislature and Delegate to Congress. 

Now, sir, I wish to call attention for a few 
moments to Governor Walker's course in regard 
to the October election frauds. The President 
quotes Governor Walker when he sustains his 
theory, but he does not quote him when Gov- 
ernor Walker's testimony goes to show that the 
people of Kansas have been cheated and de- 
frauded. For promising that the people of the 
Territory should have the right to vote on their 
Constitution, Governor Walker was assailed in 
all the slave States. I think some Senators 
demanded that he should be removed. He \fas 
denounced throughout the Southern S^ates by 
a class of public men and by a class of public 
journals for having promised that the people of 
Kansas should have a fair opportunity to vote 
for the adoption or rejection of the Lecompton 
Constitution. The Administration which gave 
him that assurance quailed beneath this denun- 
ciation from the slaveholding States. It changed 
its policy, abandoned Walker, and betrayed the 
people of Kansas. 

When the October election came on, there 
were stupendous frauds perpetrated at Oxford 
and in McGee county. These fraudulent votes, 
if counted, would have settled the character of 
the Territorial Legislature. Governor Walker 
could not give his sanction to those frauds. 
What did he do ? He investigated the frauds 
at Oxford, and the frauds in McGee county, 
and threw oat the fraudulent votes. For that 
act, for throwing cut these palpable frauds, for 
throwing out the list made up out of the Cin- 
cinnati Directory, in which it is said Governor 
Chase's name was included — for performing 
that act of justice, GDvernor Walker was assail- 
ed from one end of the Southern States to the 
other, by politicians and presses. Men who 
had sustained the invasion of the 30th of March, 
1855, of four thousand nine hundred men from 
Missouri ; men who had refused to investigate 
those fraud-j; men who had upheld the laws 
enacted by the Territorial Legislature; men 
•who had sustained the use of the army in the 
Territory, and all the acts which have trans- 
pired in that Terri':ory — these men denounced 
Governor Walker for throwing out frauds that 
prevented them, as th^y thought, fom consum- 
mating the iniquity of dragging Kansas into 
the Union as a slave State. 

We are told by the President that the people 
of Kansas have had a fair opportunity to vote 
on the Slavery qnestion. 1 am surprised thai 
the President of the United States has so little 
regard lor the intelligence of the Senate and 
the country, and for his own reputation, a? to 
make a declaration of that character. The 



people of Kansas had a fpir opportunity, he 
tells us, to vote on the 2l8t of December last, 
for or against Slavery, Sir, they h'id no such 
opportunity ; and the President of the United 
Stat3s, if he doss not know it, ought to have 
known it. Both Constitutions were slave Con- 
stitutions. The slaves in the Territory, it was 
declared by the Lecompton Constitution, were 
property ; and — 

"Tne right of property in slaves now in the Territory 
shall in no raaiiner be. interfered with." 

'• No alteration shall bemadj toaff ct the right of prop- 
erty in the ownership of slaves." 

Thepe provisions went into your Constitution 
with no Slavery 1 There are about three hun- 
dred slaves in the Territory of Kansas, This 
Constitution with no Slavery recognises the 
existencs of the right of property in those 
slaves, and d0cla"es that in no manner shall 
that property be interfered with. In any pro- 
posed amendment to the Constitution, we are 
told " that no alteration shall be made to affect 
the right of property in the ownership of slaves." 
That was the Constitution with no Slavery. 

Then we have the Constitution with Slavery ; 
and I assure Senators that I am as ready to 
have your Lecompton Constitution with Sla- 
very, as your Lecompton Constitution without 
Slavery. Your Constitution without Slavery 
recognised Slavery in the State, declared that 
it should never be interfered with, made it 
eternal. Suoh was the Constitution without 
Slavery. What a mockery is it to tell the 
people of Kansas that they had an opportunity 
to vote for or against making a slave State. 

But we are now told by the President that 
we can change this Constitution before 1864, 
I have no doubt of that. I believe the people 
have the right to change their Constitution 
when they please, and just how they please. 
But what security have we that the men who 
have been retreating for the last ten years from 
t\e Wilmot proviso, down to the doctrine 
that Slavery exists in the Territories by the 
Constitution of the United States, as much as 
it exists in Georgia or South Carolina — what 
security have we that the President cf the 
United States, that the Congress of the Uwited 
States, that the Supreme Court of the United 
States, will not declare that this constitutional 
provision cannot be changed, that it is of bind- 
ing force in the new State, and is the eternal 
law of that State, beyond thereach of the people? 
I know there are men in the country w!-io have 
already proclaimed this to be true. You can 
find in the Southern presses the doctrine that 
the people have no right to change it. It is 
held to be a sacred contract of binding foice 
forever. If the slave-drivers of the South put 
their foot down, and demand that this shall be 
the accepted doctrine of the Administration 
and the Pro-Slavery Democratic party, the 
Administration and the Pro-Slavery Democratic 
arty, with all the branches of authority, will 
a 'opt it as readily as they have adopted any of 



6 



the monstrous heresies of the past. I have no 
faith in their promises or declarations. I know 
that this Administration came into being as 
the agent of the slave propagandists ; that by 
them it lives, moves, and has its being ; and 
without their support it would perish in one 
hour. Whenever the slave power makes a de- 
mand on this Administration, or on the Pro- 
Slavery Democratic party, that demand I know 
is first resisted by a portion of them in the 
North, but they surrender in the end. No man 
can maintain his manhood, and continue to en- 
joy the confidence of the Africanized Democ- 
racy of this age. 

If we had said, Mr. President, twelve years 
ago, that the Democratic party, which then, in 
both Houses of Congress, stood up here for the 
glorious doctrines of the Ordinance of 1787, 
would have retreated from that doctrine, and 
come down, down to the doctrine that the Con- 
stitution of the United States carries Slavery 
wherever it goes, all over the Territories ; that 
wherever it goes, it carries chains and fetters 
for men — they would have justly regarded it as 
a libel upon them. They have only got a step 
or two further to go. They have only got to 
declare — and they have raised the question in 
the judicial tribunals of the country — that they 
may take their slaves in transitu through the 
free States, and then come to the final doctrine 
enunciated in the Union a few days ago, that 
these doctrines, legitimately carried out, would 
prevent the abolition of Slavery in the States 
by the State Constitutions. I believe they in- 
tend to come to that. I believe the slave- 
holding interest will ultimately demand the 
right, not only tccarry their slaves into the Ter- 
ritories, and hold them there, but they will de- 
mand the right to carry their slaves in tran 
situ through all the States, and then to set up 
the doctrine which we find in the Kansas Con- 
stitution, that slaves are property, that property 
is above all Constitutions and all laws, and that 
you have no right, by constitutiocal action, 
or any other action, to abolish Slavery in the 
States. Then we shall be an Africanized Re- 
public. 

The President tells us that the people of Kan- 
sas, on the 4th of January, by voting for the 
election of officers under the L3compton Con- 
stitution, recognised its validity. If the people 
of Kansas refuse to vote, they are denounced 
as rebels that have no rights, and they are held 
to be bound by the will of those who do vote. If 
they do vote, then they recognise the validity 
of this Constitution. The President will not 
be satisfied with their action, any way. The 
Legislature, finding that this Constitution was 
not to be submitted to the people, assembled, 
and summoned the people to the ballot-box, on 
the 4th of January, to give their votes for or 
agaitst the Constitution. By the provisions of 
that Constitution, there was an election to take 
place on that day. The Free State men wen< 
to the ballot-box, and by from eleveu to twelv ; ' 



thousand votes, voted down that Constitution. 
They wanted to make another protest against 
it ; and what were they to do ? They could not 
vote against the Lecomp^on men for State and 
Legislative officers, without putting up men of 
their own, and electing those men over them. 
They nominated a ticket. They went into that 
canvass to vote down that Constitution, and to 
vote down the men who supported it. This 
vote of the people of Kansas against these 
men, and for the election of Free State men, 
was an additional protest against your Lecomp- 
ton swindle ; and it is a perversion of fact, a 
perversion of truth, a perversion of all that is 
just, for any man, be he President, Senator, or 
Representative, to charge that the people of 
Kansas, by voting for the election of officers, 
under the Constitution, intended in any way to 
give their sanction to it. These men went to 
the«ballot-box, on the 4th of January, to blot 
out forever the Lecompton Constitution. They 
knew the people were against it by an over- 
whelming majority — of five or six to one. They 
meant to overthrow Calhoun and his corrupt 
minions in that Territory, who have violated 
law and justice, who have stained their names 
and lives by frauds and outrages. They meant 
not only to vote down the Constitution, but to 
crush out the men who were endeavoring to 
force it upon them. The only way to do that, 
was to elect men, pledged against the Constitu- 
tion, and who would come here, as they already 
have done, and ask you, ask Congress, ask the 
country, to reject it as a fraud on the people. 
Yet this act, proclaimed to the country and to 
the world, the President of the United States 
misrepresents and perverts. 

Sir, we have had enough of these petty quib- 
bles in Congress, without expecting them to 
come from the other end of the avenue. We 
have had the pleading of technicalities, all the 
little technicalities and specialties put in on a 
great question of public policy. All the out- 
rages in Kansas have been perpetrated under 
the color of law. Tyrants always rule under 
the color of law. Instead of asking " what is 
the opinion of tne people? what do they 
want ? " — instead of ascertaining what the pub- 
lic will is, we have had Senators, Representa- 
tives, and now we have the President, quibbling 
en technicalities and forms, by which the sub- 
s ance is to be lost to the people. 

We have the evidence of Governor Reeder, 
of Governor Geary, of Governor Stanton, in a 
paper recently published, and of Governor 
Walker, that outrages and frauds have, from 
time to time, been perpetrated in the Territory 
of Kansas. Now we have before U3 the fruits of 
all these frauds and all those wrongs. Senators 
here object to their final consummation. The 
Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Douglas,] who in- 
troduced the measure for the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise, who for four years has 
stood here, and before the country, as the 
champion, the acknowledged champion, of that 



poliey — a man who, durinar the struggles of 
the last three or four years, has led here, as he 
had a nght to lead, the supporters of this policy 
in the Territory of Kansas and in the country, 
asks that these frauds shall not triumph ; that 
these wrones shall not be finally consummated. 
He asks that the people of Kansas may have 
an opportunity to vote upon the Constitution, 
for or as;ainst, before admission into the Union ; 
and becanse he has paused now, because he 
simply asks that the people shall have the ri^ht 
to vote in framinof a Constitution for their own 
government, he is denounced from one end of 
the countrv to the other, by the supporters of 
the policy indicated by the Presid^^^nt in this 
message. He has not uttered a word or written 
a line endorsing the views that we on this side 
of the Chamber hold on the question of Sla- 
very; but because he now demands that the 
plighted faith of his party shall be redeemed, 
that the people phall have the right to vote on 
their own Constitution, he is hunted dawn in 
the Senate and in the country. Already he is 
branded in s^me sections of this Union as a 
Black Republican, or the ally of the Black 
Republicans Black Republicanism seems now 
to be this : any man is a Black Republican 
who refuses to support the last iniquity, the 
last crowning act of infamy. No matter though 
his whole life has been devoted to the interests 
of Slavery, if he pauses now, if he refuses to 
allow Slavery to triumph by palpable frauds, 
he is to be crushed for that act, and to be read 
out of the Damoeratic party. 

The Governor of Virginia — that Governor 
who was ready to dissolve the. Union in 1856 
if Fremont was elected, who was ready to call 
out his militia, and who boasted that they would 
" hew their bright way through all opposing 
legions" — ha? pronounced these acts in Kansas 
" unveiled trickeries " and "shameless frauds," 
which the people of Virginia would scorn. For 
that declaration he is denounced in Virginia 
and throughout the country. You have had 
Reeder, Geary, Stanton, and Walker, sacri- 
ficed. Now you propose to sacrifice the dis- 
tinguished Senator from Illinois, and the hard- 
ly less distinguished champion of the Pro-Sla- 
very Democracy of the Old Dominion. You 
propose to drive everybody out of this Admin- 
istration party who refuses to consummate this 
last iniquity, to make effective this last crime 
in the interests of Slavery. 

I hope, Mr. President, the motion I have 
made to instruct the Committee on Territories 
to investigate everything connected wiih the 
formation of the Constitution of Kansas, will 
be adopted by the Senate. If Senators are 
disposed now, at this time, with all these frauds, 
all these wrongs, before this nation, to investi- 
gate and be guided by the facts, the country 
will give them the credit of being actuated by 
a sense of justice. The ear of this countrj is 
pained with the crimes and frauds that have 
been perpetrated in Kansas. No man, here or 



elsewhere, can doubt them for a moment. The 
voice of the people of Kansas comes here in a 
thousand ways, and asks us to reject the ap- 
plication, because it has been fraoaed and car- 
ried throush in violation of the public will. 

I say, then, that if we reject this proposition 
to instruct the committee to go into a full and 
thorough investigation, it will be understood in 
Kansas and in the country, and throughout the 
world, that the Senate of the United Sta'es 
sanctions the frauds by which a Constitution, 
made by a small and contemptible minority, 
under the lead of Government officials, has 
been forced upon the people of Kansas, con- 
trary to the clearest expressions of the popular 
will. If the Senate shall refuse to institute the 
most searching inquiry into all the matters 
concerning the formation of this Constitution, 
it will stand before the world, and go down to 
after ages, associated with the men who have, 
by violence and fraud, forced the accursed sys- 
tem of Slavery upon a reluctant people. 

Remar'ks of Mr. Wilson, in Reply to Mr. Brown^ 
of Mississippi, on the 4th oj February, 1858. 
Mr. WILSON. Mr. President, the Sena'or 
from Mississippi has told the Senate and the 
country that he loves old wine better than old 
speeches. The Senator and myself differ in our 
tastes. I love old truths better than old wine. 
I was led to suppose, from the declaration of 
the Senator, that we were to have nothing 
old, stale, or threadbare, in his speech ; that we 
were to have something original, fresh, racy, 
brilliant — something that was to thrill the Sea- 
ate, charm the gallaries, electrify the nation, 
and carry the Senator's name all over the coun- 
try, to receive the admiration and applause of 
the people. I have listened to his speech, to 
his declarations, to his assertions, to his itera- 
tion of old errors, oft refuted in this Chamber 
and in the other ; and I am sorry to admit that 
Ihave heard nothing Eew, original, or striking — 
nothing which the Senator might not have foaad 
in the old speeches he so abomiaatea. The;.e 
is one declaration, however, which seems to me 
to have something of originality about it. He 
told us that he did not expect to maks any con- 
verls on this side of the Chamber. This modest 
avowal of his expectations brings to mind a 
couplet of Pope's, that we should 

•' III every work regard the writer's end. 

For none cm compass more than they iijtend." 

After listening to the Senator's long and la- 
bored speech, I am sure that we shall all admit 
that he has not, in this case, compassed more 
than he intended. The Senator could hardly 
expect to win any converts on this side of the 
Chamber, to his principles or to his sentiments, 
by logic so often refuted, or by the iteration of 
palpable errors. 

The Senator assured us that he approved cf 
the President's message, hut that he did not ex- 
pect us on this side of the Chamber to approve 
it. I did expect him to approve it, and I am not 



dis'jppointect; for the message is a complete 
and absolute public surrender, by tbe President 
or the United State:?, to the principles, the doc- 
trines, the policy, and the sentiments, of tbe 
slaveholding propagandists of this country— of 
men who are now, and have been during the 
past few years, pursuing a policy looking to the 
ultimate triumph of the slaveholding interest in 
f>i8 country, or to the dissolution of this Repub 
lie, and the establishment of a Southern Con 
federacy, based on military principles. 

The Senator supposed, he tells us, that we 
would not endorse these doctrines, because we 
w°re sectionalists— we were the sectional Ra- 
rublican party I Sir, what principle have we 
avowed, that is not incorporated into the I>ecla- 
ration of Independence, the Constitution of the 
United States, and the grand old Ordinance ot 
178Y, which received the sanction of the framers 
f f the Constitution, and the great national men 
of thf' Republic ? What policy have we avowed, 
that has not received the sanction of Washicg- 
ton, of Jefferson, and of the great men of the 
"country, North and South? I say to-day that 
we have not avowed a principle, declared a pol 
icy, or pronounced a sentiment, here or in the 
country, that has not received the sanction ct 
tie mightiest men of this Republic, ffom l77o 
up to within the last few years. We have de- 
clared everywhere that Freedom is national ; 
that the doctrines of human rights underlie our 
free democratic institutions; that all our insti- 
tutions grow out of the absolute recognition 
of the equal rights of all men. We have main- 
tained that in the Territories, under the national 
authority, under* the protecting fold^of the i 
Hf^tional flag. Freedom and free institutions for 
ail men go^ where the flag of the Republic 
goes. We have acknowledged that the system 
of Slavery is nothing but a municipal institu- 
tion, founded on Stale law, and limited to State 
lines. This was the doctrine of all the fathers 
ot the R-jpublic— of all the great statesmen 
who have associa.ed their names with the lib- 
erty, honor, and renown, of the Republic. 

There was a time when these sentiments and 
opinions were deemed national by the people 
of the country, and by the statesmen of the coun- 
try, North and South. Repudiated, spurned, 
proscribed now by the Senator from Mississippi 
ard his political associates, the time is not f»r 
distant when these sentiments and opinions of 
the fathers will again animate and guide the 
8 vns. To that dawning future we calmly appeal 
from the verdict of the Senator from Mississippi 
aid his slave extending compeers. 

Standing on these national doctrines, anima- 
ted by these ideas and sentiments, we have- not 
a-'Bumed to control the slaveholding Scates ot 
fpia Uiion. We have recognised S;ate rigb'S, 
h'^t, we have claimed authority to save the T.-r 
liberies of this R'-"public forever to free men and 
to free institutions. Do you call this sectional ? 
If it is sectional, Washington, Jefferson, Md.di- 
son, arid Monroe— all the great men of the prist— 



were sectionalists. This charge of sectionalism 
comes with an ill grace, especially from the 
Senator from Mississippi. Eight years ago, in 
the other House, when California had franied 
a Constitution which had received the sanction 
of her whole people, organized a State Govern- 
ment, and came here and asked for admission, 
the Senator from Mississippi promptly took 
the floor, and resisted her admission, because 
it would disturb the equilibrium between the 
*ree and slave States -of this Union I 

Mr. BROWN. I have no objection to the 
Senator's slating his position, but I do object 
to his giving my reasons for it. I would rather 
do that myself. I did object to the admission 
of California into the Union, and I did it because 
her Constitution was not formed through any 
legal agency proceeding from Congress or 
anywhere else ; because the Convention which 
made the Constitution was assembled upon the 
motion of a military Governor, not authorized 
fo exercise over the country even civil control, 
fle appointed the time, place, and manner, of 
holding the election. I thought it an irregu- 
larity 80 gross as not to be overlooked. I 
thought that was very much like the Dorr case, 
>r the Brigham Youn? case. 

Mr. WILSON. I will call the Senator's atten- 
tion to one of his old speeches ; and I com- 
mend him to the study of old speeches, espe- 
cially his own. I like my old speeches, because 
I always intend they shall be so sound in prin- 
ciple, correct in sentiment, and accurate m 
fact-., that I can refer to them with safety. 

In the speech before me, the Senator froni 
Mississippi, while he opposed the admission of 
California for the reasons he now states, op- 
po^fd it also avowedly on the ground that it 
would d^-stroy the balance between the free and 
the Slav 3 States. This doctrine of the balance 
between the North and the South came from 
the brain of Mr. John C. Calhoun. _ There is 
nothing national in it. It is a sec^onal idea, 
proclaimed in support of a sectional interest 
and a sectional institution. A balance between 
the North and the South ! A balance between 
the seventee-G millions of Northern freemen 
im^he seven milliocs of Southern freenaen I 
A b%'avce between the minority and majority 
jf the country! The whole doctrine ia anti- 
democrfiuc, is" local, is sectional in all its as- 
pec s, and should be scouted from this Cbam- 
ioftr ani from this country, as a dortrine at war 
with our republican instituti-ns nrd our re- 
publican ideaq. But, sir, to the old speech of 
the S?natoT from Mississippi, ard I commend 
him {'■ t'^e reading cf his old ep'^ch-^s. He 



'• What. Mr Chairman, is to be the efftct of admitting 
C-.hf. rnia iii o the Union as a State ? Iiulependenl, sir, 
of Ell the ohiections I have been pointuifr out, it will ej- 
fectiialluuniiinsethat sectional balance u-hirli has so long 
a,nl hnimilii existid between the two ends of the Vnion, ana 
at once ^ive to the North that dangerous prepunderance 
in thj tfeuiue which ambitious politicians tiave so er.r- 
nestly d-^^ired. The admission of one such State as Cal- 
ifornia opens the way for, and renders easy, the admission 



9 



i>f another The President already prompts New Mexico 
?o a Uke course. The two will reach out their hands to 
a third and they to a fourth, fif'h, and sixth. Thus pre- 
cedent' fo lows precedent, 'with a locomotive velocity 

chanVe the Constitution. When this is done, the Con- 
rriT™ WILL BE CHANGED. That public Opinion to 
whkh Senator Seward so significantly a ludes, wil be 
^en, and its power will be fell ; universal emancipation 
will become your rallying cry. 

Here, sir, we have the declarations of the 
Senator from Mississippi, against the admissiou 
of the new State on the shores of the Pacific, 
because its admission would "unhinge the sec- 
tional balance between the two ends of the 
Union ! " Yet the Senator, with this old speech 
of his on the record, assumes to read lectures 
to me— to denounce me aa a sectionalist. Can 
assurance go further ? 

Sir, the Senator " abominates old speeches, 
but I must call his attention to other avowals 
in this old speech of his : 

« My own opinion is this : that we should resist the in- 
troduction of California as a Slate, and re_sist it success- 
fully ; resist ii by our votes first, and lastly by other means. 
We can, at least, force an adjournment without her ad- 
miss on. This being done, we are safe The Southern 
States, in Convention at Nasliville, will devise means for 
vindicating their rights." 

That disunion Convention, which met, as Mr. 
Webster said, over the grave of Andrew Jack 
son, were to settle it. The Senator who taimte 
me with being actuated by a sectional spirit, 
would throw California out of Congress, and 
appeal to the sectional, disunion Nashville Con- 
vention. This is a specimen of his nationality, 
and a fine specimen of nationality it is I 

" I do not know what these means will be, but I know 
what they ?niy be, and with propriety and safety. They 
may be to carry slaves into all of Southern California, the 
Dronerly ofsoverei^n Stales, and tliere hold them, as we 
have a right to do so ; and if molested, defend them, as is 
both our right and duty. . , , 

" We ask you to give us our rights by non-interven- 
tion; if you refuse, I am for taking them by armed occu- 
pation." 

Yes, sir, the Senator then was for keeping 
California out of the Union, going to a disunion 
sectional convention, and sending slaves to pop- 
ulate California, and defending them by force 
if the people there objected I 

Now, the Senator says that I and those who 
act with me are sectionalists. I have referred 
to our principles and our policy, and I appeal 
t > Senators on the other side of this Chamber 
to 8 iy if the Senators on this side, fromthe time 
they came here to this hour, have not, in all otir 
le^t-'lation connected with the affairs of this 
country, looked over this broad land, and given 
our votes for your interests, for the interests of 
the South, as much as we have given them for 
the interests of the North ? Senators, you know 
it ! The records of the country prove it ; and 
they contain, too, your confessions and admis- 
sions that it is so. 

B it the Senator from Mississippi says our 
policy tends to build up two great interests in 
the country ; that we shall have a united North 
end a united South, and that this is to lead to 
a dissolution of the Union. The Senator now 
makes professions of devotion to the Union. In 



the speech from which I have quoted, the Sen- 
ator says that, while we of the North have been 
making profsssions of devotion to the Union— 



Our people have been calculating the value of the 
Union * * * I tell you candidly we have calculated 
the value of the Uiion. 'Love for the Union will not keep 
us in the Union.' " 

He flippantly told us that they had "no fear" 
of the dissolution of the Union, and that the 
South could maintain its power. The whole 
tone, temper, and sentiment of the speech, look 
not to the support of the Union as our fathers 
made it, but to the triumph of a sectional 
Southern policy, to the expansion of Slavery, to 
the domination of the Slave Power, or to the 
ultimate overthrow of the Government of this 
country. 

I think there will soon be a general union in 
the North, as there is now in the South. We 
are fast coming to it ; and let me tell the Sen- 
ators on the Administration side of this Cham- 
ber, that if they consummate, if they support— 
whether they succeed or fail — the bringing of 
Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton 
Constitution, with a knowledge of all these 
monstrous frauds scattered over the land, com- 
prehended by the whole country, they will do 
more to unite all honest, liberty-loving, God- 
feariug men in the North, than has been accom- 
plished by any act ever adopted by this Gov- 
ernment. Your Kansas-Nebraska policy of 
1854 shivered to atoms that great Whig party 
which had battled, sometimes successfully, for 
power here, under the lead of some of the most 
accomplished statesmen of the country. An- 
other party sprang up — the American party. It 
paused, it faltered, and it went down under the 
general judgment of the people of the free 
States. The Republican party rose in one year 
from a few thousand men, and gave at the last 
Presidential election one million three hundred 
and forty thousand votes. It came much near- 
er than you wished it to do, taking the control of 
this Government — of this country. Go on, gen- 
tlemen of the slaveholding States, in your 
avowed policy of Slavery expansion and Slavery 
supremacy, by forcing Kansas into the Union 
under the Lecompton Constitution, against the 
known will of the people of that Territory, and 
their earnest appeals to your sense of justice, 
truth, and honor, and you will arouse the peo- 
ple of the North, already deeply incensed by 
your policy, by the violence and frauds jour 
creatures have perpetrated in Kansas, to rise in 
the majesty of conscious power, thrust your 
subservient allies from power, take the Govern- 
ment, and overthrow forever you and your pol- 
icy. I tell you here to-day, that your support of 
this gigantic crime against the liberties of the 
people of Kansas is bringing upon you the con- 
demnation of the country and the world. 

Sir, the people of the free States now com- 
prehend your policy, and your purposes of Sla- 
very expansion and Slavery domination, and 
they are preparing to baffla and defeat you. 



10 



They will triumph. Doubt it not. The opin- 
ions they entertain, the policy they avow, the 
sentiments which swell their hoioms, are f?eep- 
ening and spreading all over this land. Tho^e 
opinions and ?entiments will unite the North- 
ern people. They will spread over the slave 
line as tliey have done, for they have gone into 
Missouri; they have brought into the other 
House one of the ablest and mos^ accomplished 
members of that body, from the Southern State 
of Missouri Sir, they are to pass over South- 
ern Jines. These sentiments and opinions can- 
not be hemmPd in by lines of latitude or of 
longitude. They will yet be adopted by fair- 
minded and honorable men everywhere, who 
Jove their country, who love justice and libe-tv • 
and whenever anybody shall raise the black 
„-n °^^^^ery and disunion in the South, he 
will find leaping from the ranks of the people, 
thousands of patriotic men who will stand by 
this CxovernmeDt and defend it. 

The Senator from Mississippi tells us that the 
tirst troubles in Kansas grew out of the forma- 
tion of the Emigrant Aid Society. That Socie- 
ty, he tells us, came f om a secret Congressional 
organization. The Senator is mistaken in his 
^v-l ,-^^«, secret Congressional circular to 
wnich he refers was issued in the summer days, 
atter the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
ine billincorporating the Emigrant Aid Soci 
ety was introduced into the Legislature of Mas- 
sachusetts in March, 1854-more than sixty 
Jays before your Kansas-Nebraska act passed 
It passed the Legislature of the State, and re- 
ceived the sanction of the Governor, in April— 
torty days before the Kansas-Nebraska act 
passed Congress. Instead of this secret circu- 
lar being the father of the emigration move- 
ment, you might turn it around the other way, 
ana gay the emigration movement created this 
secret Congressional movement. The Senator 
13 mistaken in this assertion. I commend him 
to the study of old facts. 

Then the Senator dwells on the fact that the 
^migrant Aid Company was incorporated with 
a capital of $5,000,000, only $20,000 of which 
could be used in the State. Does not the Sen- 
ator know that the Emigrant Aid Society was 
never organ-zed under that act at all ? No or- 
ganization under it took place, but the corpora- 
tors went to the next Legislature, and got a 

rlZ, «1 nnn^.T^^ ^ ^^P^^^^ ^^ 11,000,000. 

That ILOOO^OOO of capital is mo^-tly on paper. 
ihe company have a capital of $110,000 paid 
in, and it has been invested mostly in mills, 
churches, school houses, and lands. They never 
irom the days of their organization to this hour 
sent a man into the Territory of Kan=as-not 
one ; no sir, not ore to vote. They have s^nt 
no arms into the Territory; theirs has been a 
mission of peaceful industry. I tell the Sena- 
tor here now, that this company organized em 
gration; that it reduced the expenies of going 

^}%A Zi^ ^"1 ^°''y P^"" ^««t' i and that is all 
u aia. ihey have never asked whether a man 



was for or against Slavery. The first company 
that went to the Territory got there on the 5th 
day of August, 1854 It was a comnanv of 
thirty men, who started for the TerritorV under 
he auspices of Mr. Thayer, now a member o- 
^e House, and who originated the movement. 
l>aring the autumn of 1854, a few hundred 
persons availed themselves of this organization 
thef° *° ^^^ Territory, as emigrants, to live 

The Senator from Mississippi tells us that 
the. Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] char- 
ged that they committsd misdeeds on o-oing 
there We denied it then. He did not prove 
It. _ Ihose who make charges of that kind 
against men are bound to prove those charges 
true. These men are presumed to be innorent 
until they are shown to be guilty. I say th^re 
18 not evidence before this country that any 
man who went there under the auspices of the 
immigrant Aid Society, ever perforrned any ille- 
gal act on his way there, or in that Territory. 
Ihey were as law-abiding, upright, conscien- 
tious men, as can be found in any part of New 
England, or of this country. They were th- 
picked men of New England. Those emigrants 
who went out under the au9pice3 of that Emi- 
grant Aid Society averaged better than the 
people who remained at home. They were the 
intelligent, upright, law-abiding young men of 
Massachusetts and of New England. Prom 
the time they went there to thia° moment, you 
can find no record, in or out of the Territory, 
that they have violated laws of the United 
States— that they have ever committed any 
offence, or ever been arrested or punished for 
any offence. They stand before the country as 
those old Pilgrim Fathers stood, who landed 
at Plymouth in 1620, and they are animated 
and guided by as elevated motives and as lofty 
aims and purposes 

But the Senator from Mississippi would have 
us understand that those "irregularities," as 
he mildly designates the viohnce and frauds 
which transpired in that Territory in regard to 
the election of ! 855, were brought on by these 
men. Doss not the Senator from Mississippi 
know— if he does not know it, he ought to know 
It— that the House of Representatives sent a 
commission to that Territory ; that they thor- 
oughly investigated the whola subject; that 
they examined the names of the two thousand 
nine hundred voters residing in the Territory • 
that they found how many of those men voted' 
that they saw on the poll-books the names of 
four thousand nine hundred men who went 
there from Mi58ouri ; that there is no mistake 
about these Missourians voting on the 30th of 
March, 1855 ; that this fact is as c^ear as mathe- 
matical demonstration ? Senators may smile • 
.but this fact has been proved, absolutely proved* 
and no man can deny it. This fact is also 
proved : that from the closing of navigation in 
the autumn of 1854, up to the day of election, 
on March 30th, 1855, there went into tljat Ter* 



11 



ritory'but one hundred and sixty-siz men, 
women, and children, under the auspices of the 
Emigrant Aid Society. Ninety-seven of these 
were men, and thirty seven only of all of them 
voted at that election. Thirty-seven men, un- 
der the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society, 
voted on that day. From the time of the or- 
ganization of that society up to this hour, no 
men have gone out under its auspices to vote 
Thoee persons under the auspices of the Emi- 
grant Aid Society went to the Territory emi- 
grants, and not for the purpose of voting. 

The Senator from Mississippi seems to think 
there was nothing very wrong in the election of 
the 30th of March. Why, sir, it has been 
proved that only fourteen hundred actual resi- 
dents of the Territory voted, that over seven 
hundred of them voted for Free State men, and 
that the Free S*ate men had a majority of six- 
teen out of eighteen districts of the actual 
voters. Even the town of Lawrence gave eight 
or nine hundred votes ! They were cast mostly 
by the Slave State men who went there from 
Missouri. There were but two or three Slave 
State men in that city; one was the Postmaster, 
but he could not go for these crimes, and the 
Administration found it out, and turned him 
out of office. These facts stand on the records ; 
they have been proved to the country. They 
were first denied, then apologized for. These 
frauds did take place, and they vitiated every- 
thing in the Territory from that time to this ; 
they have been the prolific source of all , the 
strifes which have marked the history of the 
Territory. 

The Free State men, overborne by this inva- 
sion, felt that their rights had been taken from 
them, that they were outraged ; they saw that a 
Government was organized which put them all 
under the ban — a Government that required a 
test oath. They saw a Government organized 
by fraud, and sustained by force ; they saw they 
had no power; that they were as absolutely 
powerless as were the people of the tyrant of 
Naples. The doctrines of the fathers had taught 
them that the people were the source of power ; 
that, in the language of Alexander Hamilton, 
"the streams ot power came from the pure, orig- 
inal fountain of the people." They believed, 
with Mr. Jefferson, that the " majority had a 
right to depute delegates to a Convention, and 
to make a Constitution for themselves." They 
believed in your Kansas-Nebraska act, and I sup- 
pose they were the only people in America who 
had any abiding faith in it ; for it appears that 
the Senator from Mississippi and most of his as- 
sociates have none, and I do not know any- 
body on this side of the Chamber that was ever 
deceived about that act. They, by an act of 
original inherent sovereignty, called a Conven- 
tion ; they framed a Constitution ; they had it 
endorsed ; they have been denounced as rebels 
for that act, and for passing laws enough to 
keep up the organization, so that if they were 
ever driven to it, they might use that organiza- 



tion to defend their lives, their liberty, and their 
property. They have never attempted to enforce 
one of those laws, and yet the Senator from 
Mississippi denounces their acts as rebellion I 
Rebellion I Why, sir, did Michigan rebel in 
1836 ? Did not her people establish a Govern- 
ment ? Did they not drive out, or rather turn 
out, by the expression of the popular will, the 
Governor sent there by Andrew Jackson ? Did 
not Andrew Jackson sustain them ? And did 
not James Buchanan, in this Chamber, defend 
them ? Did he call it rebellion then ? The 
people of the State of California formed a Con- 
stitution without authority. Were they rebels ? 
Minnesota has framed a Constitution with your 
leave. She is framing laws under this Consti- 
tution, before her admission into the Union. 
Are her people rebels ? This charge of rebellion 
against the people of Kansas has nothing of 
truth in it. It is a libel, a slander, come from 
what source it may. 

The Senator tells us that the people ordered 
this Constitutional Convention. The first Leg- 
islature, chosen by the men from Missouri, 
passed a law that in October, 1856, the sense 
of the people should be taken. In October, 
1856, a vote was taken, and about two thousand 
three hundred men voted on that occasion. 
On the day on which the vote was taken, laws 
were on the statute-book, requiring a test oath, 
an oath to eupport the hideous fugivive slave 
law ; and no man of principle or honor would 
take that revolting and degrading oath, so none 
could vote. Do you suppose that liberty-loving. 
God-fearing men, would take that infamous 
oath ? Then every ballot box was in the hands 
of men appointed by this Territorial Legisla- 
ture. The people had been to the polls once, 
and they met an armed invasion ; they were 
cheated, overborne, and defrauded. Laws had 
been passed, requiring this test oath to be taken, 
and taxes to be paid, and the voters were to be 
?:i7en into the hands of men who had cheated 
and robbed them of their rights. Of course, 
the people of the Territory did not vote. They 
would have been craven spirits if they had 
voted. 

Then, Mr. President, the Legislature assem- 
bled, January, 1857, and they passed an act 
calling a Convention. If Senators will exam- 
ine this act, they will find that it was intended 
to cut off the spring emigration into the Terri- 
tory. They knew they had possession of the 
Government, and that they could control the 
Territory, and shape its future. They refused 
to provide for the submission of the Constitu- 
tion to the people ; and Governor Geary tells 
us that, when he said to these men, " I will sign 
this bill if you will submit the Constitution to 
*he people," they said they had been advised 
by their Southern friends, not to submit it to 
the people, because, if they did not, it would 
secure Kansas as a slave Slate. Sir, this with- 
holding the Constitution from the people is a 
part of the plan originally adopted to defraud 



12 



the people, to baffla their will, and to force npon 
them a. loathed and abhored institution. 

Who were to take the census ? Who were to 
register the voters? The officials appointed 
under this Territorial bogus Legislatare — yes, 
sir, bogus in every sense — were to take the 
census and register the voters. Governor Stan- 
ton and Governor Walker tell us that in nine- 
teen counties no census was taken, and in fif- 
teen counties no registration. There was a 
paper read the other day, headed by Henry 
Clay Pate, undertaking to get over the force of 
that charge. I have examined this paper, 
signed by Henry Clay Pate, and in eleven lines 
there are twelve absolute lies, and the law book 
of the Territory shows it. Do not Senators 
know that in some of these counties there was 
a large population, that they gave more votes 
at the Oolober election than were given for 
the election of delegates to the Constitutional 
Convention in June ? 

The Senator from Mississippi thinks this can 
not be true, and he quotes the appeals of Gov 
ernor Walker when he first went into Territory, 
against Governor Walker after he had spent 
months in the Territory. He went there as 
Saul went to Tarsu? — he did not understand 
the affairs of that Territory. Mr. Stanton is 
frank enough in the admirable address he has 
just published to the people of the United 
States — an address marked by truth, by candor, 
and by everything that should win for him the 
respect of fair minded men — to declare that 
when he went to that Territory he did not 
underEtand its affairs. The honorable Senator 
from Mississippi would display more fairness if 
he would quote to U3 the words of Governor 
Walker after m'onths of residence in the Terri 
tory had made him familiar with the condition 
of affairs. The time and conditions fixed npon 
by the Legiidature were intended to cut off the 
population that would pour into the Territory 
from^ March to the third Monday of June. The 
machinery and the carrying into effect the 
whole arrangement were intended expressly to 
take possession of that Territory, and make it a 
slave State. 

Mr. PUGH. Will the Senator allow me to 
make a suggestion ? 

Mr. WILSON. Certainly. 

Mr. PUGH. I understand the Senator com- 
plains of the Convention act of 1857, because 
it was designed to cut off the spring emigration 
of that year. Ami right in that ? 

Mr. WILSON. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PUGH. Then why does the Senator 
complain that the spring emigration of 1855 
voted ? It ia as long as it is broad. 

Mr. WILSON. I will state the difference. 
This act provided for taking the census ; and I 
think it was to be closed in April. Then 
the names were to be placed in the hands of of- 
ficials, who were to make up the registration. 
This was to be done early in May ; a residence of 
six months was required, to entitle a man to 



vote. It cut off the thousands who went there 
as actual residents in March, April, May, and 
the first three weeks of June — men who were 
to cast their fortunes in that Territory. The 
four thousand nine hundred men who went 
over from Missouri in 1855, wen^ back the next 
day ; marched back with banners and music ; 
they were not, and did not intend to be, residents. 
That is the difference. I hope Hhe Senator 
from Ohio sees it. I complain that the m*en 
who go there to live are cut off. I do not com- 
plain that the men who go there to vote should 
be cut off, whether they go from the North or 
the South. 

The Ssnatorfrom Mississippi quotes Governor 
Walker, as saying, on the 27th of July, that 
there was no longer any fear of invasion from 
M'ssouri, and the people could vote. Hare is 
another of the Senator's inaccurate statements. 
The people elected delegates on the third Mon- 
day in Jane, and this letter was written on the 
27th of July. The Senator froin Mississippi 
ougrht to be a little more accurat? in his facts, 
and I commend him to the study of old speech- 
es, to listen to old speeches with patience, until 
he is better posted in his facte. G )v. Walker in 
this letter has reference to'the October election, 
to the Legislature under the Territorial laws, 
and not the election of delegates to the Conven- 
tion. The people voted in October. Ic their 9ih 
of June Convention, before the delegates were 
elected, the p? ople assembled in the largest Con- 
vention ever held in Kansas; they discussed the 
questions connected with the interests of the 
Territory for two days, and voted with only one 
exception to go into the October election. 
They voted to elect their officers under the 
Topeka Constitution ia the first week of August. 
They did elect officers under the Topeka Con- 
stitution, and they went into the Territorial 
election in October, and carried that election 
also. 

But the Senator from Mississippi has great 
doubts about frauds. Does he cot know that 
the people were nearly being cheated out of 
their Legislature ? If Governor Walker had 
not assumed the responsibility of throwing out 
some fraudulent votes, the people, who tri- 
umphed by five thousand majority, would have 
been cheated out of the Legislature. The 
frauds at Kickapoo, at Oxford, and in McGee 
county, if allowed to pass uncorrected, would 
have lost them the Legislature * Governor 
Walker saw that these frauds were so great 
that he must reject them, and he did reject the 
McGee and the Oxford frauds. 

Mr, FESSENDBN. He rejected them for in- 
formality. 

Mr. WILSON. He rejected them, as the Sen- 
ator from Maine suggests, for informality ; but 
he went down to Oxford and found " six houses" 
aad only a few people there. He found that 
over fifteen hundred fraudulent votes had been 
returned, and he threw out the returns. 

In answer to a question of the Senator from 



13 



New Hampshire, the Senator from Missiasippi 
said there might be occasion to go behind the 
instrument, and investigate the frauds. Now, 
what are the charges ? That there were frauds 
in the elections of the 2l8t of December and 
4th of January, everybody knows. The Con- 
vention which framed the Lecompton Constitu- 
tion was elected in June. It met, and adjourn- 
ed to a period after thq October election. When 
they saw that the Legislature of the Territory 
was taken possession of by the Free State men, 
they changed their tactics. It is true, as^ the 
Senator from Mississippi tells us, that meetings 
were got up, asking Calhoun and hia associates 
not to submit the Constitution to the people. 
Calhoun and those men had pledged themselves 
to do it. On the demand of the President, on 
the promise of Governor Walker, and the dec- 
larations of the Washington Union, they had 
promised the people of Kansas that they would 
submit the Constitution to the people. They 
provided for its submission in such a way that 
Governor Walker could not correct frauds, as 
he had done iu the case of Oxford and McGee 
county, and so that Calhoun could have the 
matter in his hands— a man who would noi 
only permit the frauds, but, if necessary, make 
the frauds himself. He was just the man to 
do it ; for God never allowed to walk the green 
earth any man who more richly deserves to die 
a traitor's death, and leave a traitor's n&me, 
than John Calhoun. 

Mr. GREEN. Say it to his face. , _ 

Mr. WILSON. I have said it here, and it 
goes on the record. I have no fear of the tools 
of border ruffianism in Washicgtoa or in Kan- 
sas. I am able to take care ot myself. I will 
try to do so, at any rate. Sir, this John Cal- 
houn has cheated and defrauded the people ot 
Kansas out of their sacred rights. He has com- 
mitted a crime against the liberties of the peo- 
ple, which will associate hie name with tyranny 
and tyrant?, while the history of Kansas Shall be 
read and remembered by mankind. 

The Senavor fi-om Mississippi justifies the 
refusal to submit the Conatitution. Why, sir, 
it has been the policy in ail the States to ascer- 
tain the popular will by submitting Constitu- 
tions to the people, to ascertain the popular 
will. These men knew that, if they submitted 
the Constitution to the people, it would be vo- 
ted down, four or five to one. The President 
says they would have voted it down, because 
they did not like the source from which it em- 
anated. What business was it to John Calhoun, 
or to that Convention, or to the President of the 
United States, whether the people of Kanaas 
would vote down the Constitution or not ? That 
was their business. It does not belong to the 
President or his Cabinet to pronounce on their 
motives for doing it. It is an insult to a free 
people to talk to them in this language, wheth- 
er it comes from the Executive mansion or that 
class of men who formed the Convention that 
assembled in Kansas. 



The Senator repeats the declaration of the 
Executive, that the people had an opportunity 
to vote on the question of making Kansas a 
free or slave State. The vote was taken on 
that provision of the Constitution, whether 
Kansas should be a slave State, with the slave 
trade, or whether Kansas should be a slave 
State, without the slave trade. That was the 
whole of it. Kansas was to be a slave State 
anyhow. In order to make it a slave State, 
without the slave trade, the voter had to vote 
for the Constitution. No one could vote against 
it. It was one of the most stupendous msulta 
to a free people, that a body of usurpers 
ever offered. They took their votes. They 
have returned six thousand seven hundred votea 
at that election— thirteen hundred down at this 
little township of Oxford. The town of Kicka- 
poo gave nearly eleven hundred votes— a town 
that cannot have legally more than four hun- 
dred voters. Pour or fivi towns make up 
ihree thousand fraudulent votes given on that 
day. No man, who knows anything of Kansas, 
believes that there were more than twenty-five 
hundred, at the utmost, legal votes given in 
Kansas on that Constitatiou. Sir, Secretary 
Stanton tells us, in hi? addtpss to the A-merican 
people, that enormous frauds have been perpe- 
trated at the precincts of Oxfoid, Shawnee, and 
Kickapoo ; and it may well be bdieved that 
this result was actually designed by the artful 
leaders, who devised the plan and framework 
of the Lecompton Constitution. 

Sir, the Legislature have appointad commis- 
sioners to investigate the alleged frauds at 
Kickapoo and some other precints. The evi- 
dence already t!?,ken before ihe commissioner 
3r,;ves beyond all quesiion that enormous frauds 
have been perpetrated. John C. Vaughn, a 
gentleman not wholly unknown to the country, 
testifies that he went to the polls with Thomas 
Ewing, jr., son of the distinguished Ohio states- 
man. When he arrived at the polls, at a quar- 
ter past four o'clock, the officers informed him 
that *' 467 votes had been polled." " Double 
voting," he says, " was barefaced, so barefaced 
that 'the judges inside and the bystanders out- 
side could not help seeing it." 

More than one thousand votes ware returned 
by the officers, and this, too, in a place where 
the oldest residents testify before the commis- 
sioners that there are m t over three hundred 
and fifty voters. Mr. Joseph Cornell, a Depu- 
ty United States Marshal, testifies that, the polls 
were early surrounded by about " one hundred 
men and boyo, armed with hicko:y cluba two 
and a half feet long'"'— that some of them 
threatened " to shoot the firat man who chal- 
lenged a voter "—that he went to Capt. Brown, 
and made in writing a demand for troops '* to 
protect the p^Us "— " that he agreed to do it, 
but after holding a private conversation with 
Gen. Whitfield, he declined to do so "—that 
" Mr. Ewing took hia dispatch to Gen. Harney, 
and Harney sent ordera to Brown to obey hia 



14 



commands, bnt it was then four o'clock, and too 
late to be of service." This U. S. Deputy 
Marshal testifies that he " saw one man vote 
three times within twenty minutes " — that *' he 
went up to vote seven times " — that he chal- 
lenged him three times, but he got in four 
votes. He also testifies that he saw others vote 
two and three times. Mr. William W. Galla- 
ger testifies to seeing one man " hand in six tick- 
ets, one at a time, before he left the window." 

The Cincinnati Times publishes a letter in 
regard to tliis investigation ; and I wish to call 
the attention of Senators to it, especially the 
Senator from Missouri. The St. Louis Demo- 
crat makes an abstract of this correspondence. 

"On Vhe original poll book of the vole on the Conslitu- 
tion, December 21 , 1857, which book is now on file in the 
county recorder's oflice in Ijeavenworlh, it was discover- 
ed that James Uuclianan, President of the United States, 
cast the two hundred and seventieth vote." 

Mr. SEWARD^ What day was that? 

Mr. WILSON. On the 2l3t of December. 

Mr. GREEN. For or against Slavery? 

Mr. WILSON. " For the Constituton with 
Slavery," of course. The Senator need give 
himself no anxiety about what vote James Bu- 
chanan would give, in Kansas or out of it. I 
wish the President would go to Kansas. He 
has sent out his Governors there, and they went 
as men sent out of old, to curse the people, and 
they come back blessing the people. If the 
President could be there a few weeks, he would 
become a wiser and better man. Instead of de- 
nouncing these people as rebels, I think he 
would come back and say that he had found a 
people loving liberty, law, and order, who had 
been oppressed by a class of his corrupt and 
unprincipled officials. 

"Next on the li?t of distinguished names appears, as 
the two hundred and seventy-sixth voter, William H. 
Seward, of New York." [Laughter.] 

They do not say how William H. Seward 
voted on that day, but we all know how William 
H. Seward would have voted, if he had been 
there. 

"393d. Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky. 714th. G. 
W, Brown, editor Herald of Freedom. Then, S59th, John 
C. Fremoiii " [Laughter.] 

Mr. GREEN. How did he vote? 

Mr. WILSON. The record does not state how 
any of them voted except Bucbauau. 

At the 4th of January election, Delaware 
Crossing gave, it is said, forty-three votes. 
These votes had not got in when Governor 
Denver, and Mr. Deitzler, and Mr. Babcock, 
counted the votes. It now turns out that the 
returns have come in from that Crosaing, where 
forty-three votes were given, and they have re- 
turned three hundred and forty-nine for the 
slave ticket, and that ticket is elected by that 
vote — being eight Representatives from Leav- 
enworth district, and three Senators, making a 
change of six in the Senate and sixteen in the 
House, changing the whole political complex- 
ion of the State. 

Sir, this infamous fraud, by which the people 
of Kansas were defrauded of their rights — by 



which the Pro-Slavery State and Legislative 
tickets have triumphed, is fixed, beyond all 
doubt, upon John Calhoun and his abhorred 
compeers. James C. Grinter and Isaac Mun- 
dee, two of the judges, testify that forty-three 
votes were given — all Demccrates votes — that 
is, all Pro-Slavery votes, for Democratic votes 
and Pro-Slavery votes are one and the same in 
Kansas, as they are getting to be all over the 
country. They testify that these votes were 
placed in a box, and delivered to John D. 
Henderson, to be delivered at Leavenworth, to 
Mr. Oliver Diefendorf, a commissioner appoint- 
ed by John Calhoun, his brother-in-law. Hen- 
derson testifies that he left Delaware Crossing 
that night at eleven o'clock, and that he placed 
the box containing the votes in Diefendorrs 
hands about noon on the 5th. He testifies 
that " six days after he gave the returns to 
Diefendorf, he asked him if he had sent them 
to Calhoun, and he said he had." By this tes- 
timony of John D. Henderson, these returns 
were made to Calhoun before the 11th of Jan- 
uary. On the 14th of January, the returns of 
the election of the 4th were counted at Ls- 
compton. Governor Denver, and the President 
of the Council, and the Speaker of the House, 
were invited to be present. Henderson was 
then at Lawrence, a prisoner, charged with 
altering the.3e returns. Colonel J. H. Noteware, 
recently from Chicago, now of Kansas, a gen- 
tleman with whom I travelled several days last 
May in the Territory, testifies that he went to 
Lecompton on the day the votes were counted ; 
that before he left Lawrence, Henderson sent 
by him a message to Calhoun " not to count 
the votes until he could see him ; " and that he 
requested him to ask Governor Denver " to urge 
Calhoun not to open the returns of that pre- 
cinct until he had seen him." Although these 
returns were delivered to Diefendorf on the 5th 
of January, and he told Henderson before the 
11th that he had delivered them to Calhoun, 
they were not counted on the 14th ; and Cal- 
houn stated, says Colonel Noteware, that " they 
had not been received, and that he should hold 
the matter open until he heard from that pre- 
cinct, before he declared the result of that 
county." Thug, by deception, falsehood, and 
by fi:aud, the people of Kansas have been de- 
ceived, betrayed, and defrauded, by men who 
deserve a felon's doom. 

The frauds in Kansas are patent to the whole 
country ; nobody doubts them. There is not 
an intelligent man in America who doubts 
them. Secretary Stanton well says — and I com- 
mend his words to Senators, who raise doubts 
concerning these frauds — " The frauds commit- 
ted are notorious ; and though dishonest per- 
sons may deny them, and fill the channels of 
public information with shameless representa- 
tions to the contrary, they can be easily estab- 
lished beyond all controversy." 

Sir, why is it, when these charges have gone 
over this country, that the President of the 



15 



United States, against the protests of some of 
the ablest and best men cf his party, in this 
body and in the other House ; against the voice 
of the press of his party, in the Northwest ; 
against the intelligence that comes flashing 
over the wires and by mail, by presses, and by 
letters from all quarters of the Union, sends 
in this message, misrepresenting, misstating 
the affairs in Kansas, and pressing its prompt 
admission ? Why is it that Senators — honora- 
ble men — men who ought to scorn to do a mean 
thing — also press it ? Why is it that this is 
pressed, to be hurried through, and this act 
consum 'Dated, when we know that, on the 4th 
of January, twelve thousand men of that Ter- 
ritory vcted against this Constitution, and that 
there were only fix thousand votes cast for it 
on the 2lEt of December, of which three or 
four thousand were unquestionably fraudulent? 

There is only one power on this continent 
which ccu'.d thus control,' direct, and guide men, 
and that is that gigantic slave power which 
holds this Admin'stratioii in the hollow of its 
hand, whi.h guides and directs the Democratic 
party, and which has only to stamp its foot, 
and the men who wield the Government of this 
country tremble, submit, and bow to its will. 
Senators talk about the dangers of the coun- 
try. Great God 1 What are our dangers 1 
The danger is, that there is such a power, a 
local, sectional power, that can control this 
Government, can ride over justice, ride over a 
wronged people, consummate glaring and out- 
rageous frauds, and override and trample down 
the will of a brave and free people. That is 
the danger. The time has come when the 
freemen of this country, looking to liberty, to 
popular rights, to justice to all sections of the 
country, should overthrow this power, and 
trample it under their feet forever. The time 
has come when the people should rise in the 
majesty of conscicus power, and hurl from 
office, and from places of influence, the men 
who thus bow to this tyranny. 

Senators are anxious about the Union. The 
Senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] today 
thought it was in peril. Well, sir, I am not 
alarmed about it. I am in the Union ; my State 
is in the Union ; we intend to stay in it. If 
anybody wants to go out, Mexico and Central 
America, and the valley of the Amazon, are all 
open to emigration; let them start. I shall do 
nothing to keep them in the Union. I shall 
not hold them back, or mourn over their de- 
parture. Bat all this continent now in the 
Union is American soil, and a part of my coun- 
try ; and my vote and my influence, now and 
hereafter, will be given to keep it a part of my 
country. 

Mr. GREEN spoke warmly in reply to Mr. 
Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. A very few words, Mr. Presi- 
dent, in response to the Senator from Missouri. 
I say in advance, that threats, by word, tone, 
gesture, or manner, from that Senator, have no 



terrors for me. Let him understand this once 
for all. He talks about charges made against 
some of the people of his State, and he says 
that when charges are made, unless they are 
supported by authority, they are slanders. I 
agree with the Senator. For myself, I have 
said nothing in regard to his State that is not 
on the records of this Government, where it will 
live forever — evidence taken under the solem- 
nity of oaths, by a committee of the House of 
Representatives. 

When, in January, 1856, knowing, as I did, 
many of the facts in regard to the election of 
the 30th of March, 1855,1 brought them before 
the Senate, a Senator from Missouri [Mr. Geyer] 
assumed to question or deny them. I proved 
them upon him then on this floor, and there is 
not a man here who has attempted to disprove 
ihem from that time to this. When the propo- 
sition to raise the House committee was made, 
it was resisted. The committee raised, in spite 
of this resistance, reported, after months of 
careful investigation, a large volume of rec- 
ords, proving that four thousand nine hundred 
men from Missouri went into the Territory 
and voted on that day. It is as clearly demon- 
strated as is any mathematical problem in Eu- 
clid^ and it requires a degree of assurance in 
any man to deny it, here or elsewhere. 

Bold, vehement, and reckless denials, will 
not avail the Senator from Missouri. There 
is the record — explain it, disprove it, if you 
can — but do not suppose that unsupported de- 
nials will do. Sir, I tell the Ssnator, here and 
now, that no man shall brand me as a calum- 
niator when I refer to that record. I stand 
upon that unimpeached record of the fraud 
and violence of lawless ruffianism, and I tell 
the Senator that I shall not be intimidated by 
threats, here or elsewhere. 

The Senator says, that when I referred to the 
investigation at Kickapoo, I knew that James 
Buchanan and William H. Seward did not 
vote in the Territory of Kansas. Of course I 
knew it. There were over one thousand votes 
returned as cast on the 21st of December at 
Kickapoo. The Senator intimates that Black 
Republicans gave these names. Sir, Black 
Republicans did not vote on that day, and the 
Senator ought to have known it. He did know 
it, and knowing it, he makes the declaration 
that Black Republicans had given in those 
names. The votes on that day were Pro-Sla- 
very votes. Republicans were not there to 
give the name of any man. 

Sir, the Senator denies all the accumulated 
evidences of fraud in Kansas. He saw no ev- 
idences of fraud in the documents before us. 
Are we to have no other evidence on which 
we are to act as public men, than what we 
gather from the Executive documents ? Sir, 
the tree of knowledge does not grow in the Ex- 
ecutive gardeu. I wish it did ; if it were so, we 
should not have such documents as we have 
before us. Oar knowledge is net limited to 



16 



Executive documents, or to the evidences fur- 
nished by Executive agents in that Territory. 
There is some little intelligence outside of the 
councils of the Executive and hia tools in Kan- 
sas. 

The Senator frara Missouri objects to these 
declarations of frauds being made. Is it not 
admitted that frauds have taken place in Kan- 
sas ? How is it in Oxford? Did not Govern- 
or Walker prove that fifteen hundred fraud 
ulent votes were given there in October last? 
Mr. PUGH, What is proved? 
Mr. WILSON. That there were frauds at 
Oxford in the October election. 
Mr. PUGH. How do you know it ? 
Mr. WILSON. Gov. Walker and Secretary 
Stanton examined the facts, and stated them 
to the country. The returns were thrown out 
as fraudulent. Is not this eviderbce conclusive ? 
The public press states the facts ; ihe people 
there slate the facts. That town gave sixteen 
hundred votes in October, and thirteen hundred 
en the 21st of December. I say the simple 
statement of the fact shows that there must be 
fraud. The Senator from Missouri knows it 
must be a fraud. 

Mr. GREEN. I know exactly the contrary ; 
and can give an explanation which will be sat- 
isfactory to the Senate. • 
Mr. WILSON. Will you do it now ? 
Mr. GREEN. I will do it when you refer 
that subject to the committee of which I am a 
member. 

Mr. WILSON. We will refer it to you, and 
I want you to give us the facts. 
Mr. GREEN. I will do it. 
Mr. WILSON. It is known that there are 
not over uLe huudred and thirly voters in the 
piace. Governor Walker states that he found 
there " six houses and no tavern," and this lit- 
tle place gave fifteen hundred votes on the 
second day of the election in October, although 
the inhabitants told Gov. Walker that orJy 
about fiffy persons were at the meeting that 
day. These votes in October must have been 
fraudulent, and so must have been the vote in 
December. 

The Senator talks about our saying here that 
the people of Kansas do not want to come into 



the Union. We have not said so. I believe 
the people of Kansas, of all parties, desire to 
come into this Union. It is not a question of 
coming into the Union, but it is a queatipn of 
how they shall come in. 

The Senator talks about the legal people, and 
he indulges in legal technicalities. I admit he 
has the color of law on his side. Hia Missouri 
men went over there and elec-ed a Legislature ; 
they took possession of the Government ; they 
made the laws ; their friends have administered 
them from that time to this ; the Pierce and 
Buchanan Administrations have upheld them ; 
and all the wrongs of Kansas have been per- 
petrated under them. Because they have the 
color of law on their eide, it does not follow that 
it is rigTit or just, or that we should be governed 
by forms and technicalities in considering the 
application for admission. What Kansas wants, 
what the country wants, what we demand here, 
is substantial justice. We do not wish to lose 
the substance by a to'o rigid adherence to mere 
forms and legal quibbles. 

The Senator indignantly denounces what he 
is pleased to call imputations on his constitu- 
ents. Imputations have not been made by me. 
I make the positive and direct charge that 
Misaouriins have repeatedly fraudulently voted 
in Kansas, and I am prepared at all times to 
prove that charge by testimony beyond deniaL 
I want a fair and distinct undersranding with 
him. If I misstate in any respect a matter of 
'act in regard to Kansas, and he will show it 
to be so, I will most gladly correct it. 

Mr. GREEN. It would be a little more ap- 
propriate, and a little more in conformity with 
the ordinary rules of right, for a man who 
makes a charge to sustain it, aud not require 
his opponent to prove a negative. 

Mr. WILSON. I agree to that, and I agree 
to the Senator's general declaration that a man 
who makes a charge without proof is a slan- 
derer. I accept that declaration with all its 
const quencesi What I have stated here to-day 
as matters of fact, I have the evidence to sul>- 
stantiate; atd I tell him his general denials 
will not do. But, air, I will detain the Senate 
no longer. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

BUELL & BLANCH ARD, PRINTERS. 
1858. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

I II' Hill I in I III 



016 094 416 A 




